America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It by Mark Steyn

Author:Mark Steyn [Steyn, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Europe, Political Ideologies, International Relations, Political Freedom & Security, World Politics - 1989, Government, United States - Foreign Relations - 2001, Civilization; Western, General, United States, Twenty-First Century, United States - Civilization - 1970, Conservatism & Liberalism, Political Science, Islam and Politics, Europe - Civilization - 1945, 1989, Sociology, World Politics, Social Science
ISBN: 9781596985278
Publisher: Regnery Publishing
Published: 2006-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

Page 73

Sounds very nice. But in practice the lack of belief in divine presence is just as likely to lead to humans avoiding responsibility: if there's nothing other than the here and now, who needs to settle disputes at all? All you have to do is manage to defer them till after you're dead--which is the European electorates' approach to their unaffordable social programs. The meek's prospects of inheriting the earth are considerably diminished in a post-Christian society: chances are they'll just get steamrollered by more motivated types. You don't have to look far to get the cut of my jib.

And yet even those who understand very clearly the nature of Islam are complacent about Europe's own structural defects. Olivier Roy, one of the most respected Islamic experts in France, nevertheless insists "secularism is the future." Almost by definition, secularism cannot be a future: it's a present-tense culture that over time disconnects a society from cross-generational purpose. Which is why there are no examples of sustained atheist civilizations. "Atheistic humanism" became inhumanism in the hands of the Fascists and Communists and, in its less malign form in today's European Union, a kind of dehumanism in which a present-tense culture amuses itself to extinction. Post-Christian European culture is already post-cultural and, with its surging Muslim populations, will soon be postEuropean. If ever there were a time for a strong voice from the heart of Christianity, this would be it. And yet most mainline Protestant churches are as wedded to the platitudes du jour as the laziest politician. These days, if it weren't for homosexuality, the "mainstream" Christian churches would get barely any press at all. In 2005, the big story in America was the Episcopal Church's first openly gay bishop; in Britain, the nomination of a celibate gay bishop; in Canada, New Westminster's decision to become the first diocese in the Anglican communion to perform same-sex ceremonies. In Nigeria, where on any Sunday the Anglicans in the pews outnumber those in America, Britain, and Canada combined, the archbishop is understandably miffed that the only news he gets from head office revolves around various permutations of gayness. Getting a reputation as a cult for upscale Western sodomites and a few attendant fetishists, doesn't help when half your country's in the grip of sharia and the local Islamoheavies are just itching to torch your churches. Whatever one's views of homosexuality, it would seem in the greater scheme of things to be marginal, and thus the preoccupation with minority sexuality is best understood as an example of mainstream Protestantism's retreat to the periphery. It's the difference between the Broadway of Rodgers and Hammerstein and the Broadway of Stephen Sondheim. The former was the great central thruway of American popular culture; the latter may be, as its admirers claim, better, sharper, more sophisticated, but it's also under-attended. The bishop of Maryland, making a painful attempt to get with the program, tried to square the awkward Biblical strictures on homosexuality with the vigorous sex life of Gene Robinson, the Anglican Communion's first openly gay bishop.

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